Belgian blue

It was a year ago that McLeish signed him. If you discount Mikel Arteta, a £5.5m deal sanctioned by McLeish but agreed by his predecessor, Dick Advocaat, and likewise the known quality of Barry Ferguson, who was sold to Blackburn under his charge for more than he returned for 18 months later, Buffel is the most McLeish has gambled on a footballer. In relative terms of what few funds he has been permitted, the £2.3m signing from Feyenoord last January was a significant investment. It had to be proved right.

The jury was out: the player was perceived as too slight and so were his early returns. Now the court’s deliberations can be pronounced over and the verdict has to be money well spent. Contracted for a further three-and-a-half years, Buffel has the potential to go for twice what Rangers paid for him.

If that sounds doubtful, he has been valued at around £5m before. Back in the summer of 2004, that is what Feyenoord were saying he was worth after more than 30 goals for them in two seasons. Or they were until Ruud Gullit got involved. As Feyenoord manager, Gullit substituted Buffel at half-time in his first match and the bench is where he stayed until, finally, he had to make a stand. At its nadir, Gullit would have Buffel warm up for as much as an hour of games and still not bring him on, as if to demonstrate how cold he was towards him.

“I had to live with that,” says Buffel. “It was hard because I had to try and change his mind. I’d had two wonderful years there so the supporters knew what I was capable of, I thought to myself, ‘There must be a moment that he changes things’, because the team wasn’t picking up results. It was amazing the way my transfer value went down and down. For any player it’s important to feel the manager has confidence in you, to hear small words of encouragement, but we never spoke at all.”

When the end came even Buffel’s reduced fee was still deemed too high by some. Of all the clubs who expressed interest — Anderlecht, Benfica and Schalke were the most serious — only Rangers were willing to do a deal. Did Buffel have concerns about the style of Scottish football when it came to agreeing a contract until 2009? “No, that was one of the reasons why I came here,” he counters. “Everyone sees me only as a technical player and it’s good for me to get a little bit more physical. I’ve always had the mentality to go and impose myself on games, but sometimes here you need even more than that.”

When McLeish phoned him personally during negotiations he said the Premierleague was “hard but fair”, though Buffel had already consulted Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Pierre van Hooijdonk. “You have to be happy outside of a club to perform and they assured me I would be. Gio said, ‘If you play well and make your mark then the supporters will love you forever’. People live for football here, you know. Maybe after eight years at the same place it was the right time to move on anyway. It was good for my development as a player to try a new environment.”

It was his biggest career decision, but not his first. When an only child leaves home, the parents’ sense of loss is bound to be greater. Buffel was 16 when he informed his he was leaving Ruddervoorde, a village outside of Bruges in his native Belgium, to join Feyenoord in Rotterdam. “It was hard for them to see their son go so young,” he says, “but they gave me the choice.” At his then club, Cercle Bruges, he trained three times a week, Feyenoord offered daily sessions: an easy choice even if it was to prove a difficult transition.

“People in Belgium are, maybe, well, shy is too big a word, let’s say more modest types, while in Holland they speak their minds,” he smiles. “I was quiet. They’re more direct and that’s what I learned. I remember being told, ‘Be more for yourself, more selfish’, in Holland there was a lot of shouting at each other on the pitch and in the dressing room that I wasn’t used to. My view still is that if you perform on the pitch, then you can say something, not before. A lot of people speak in Holland when they haven’t achieved anything.”

For two seasons he was loaned to Excelsior before establishing himself in the Feyenoord team, a footnote barely worth a mention were it not to have had lasting consequences for Rangers. Nominally, Buffel missed two months of this season with a patella tendon injury sustained while playing for Belgium against Spain last October; only the real story may be rather more complicated than that: he believes the damage to his knee was from long ago.

“I could understand why the club were a bit disappointed about that, but the injury wasn’t really during the game I went off in, it may have been from before,” he says. “When I was younger I had the same problems with the knee. Because you’re young and growing it’s a common thing, the patella tendon injury. When I made my move from Excelsior back to Feyenoord, I was young and felt I had to take that chance when maybe rest was needed, but sometimes you have to go for it. If you don’t take your opportunity you won’t get it again, you have to go on. I hadn’t felt anything for years, but probably it was that problem from a long time ago.”

McLeish expressed some anger at the time that Buffel had too readily cleared the pain barrier for his country without thinking where it would land him, but the player disputes his guilt. Was he not too brave for his own good? “Well, if I am, I’m the same for Rangers, as well,” he insists. “If you give everything, you want to play. No player feels 100% going into games, there’s always a few things that sometimes you feel, but ultimately you ’re fine. If it’s possible to play I will.”

Buffel’s commitment to Rangers may be tested should Premiership interest emerge in coming years. Galatasaray inquired about him last July, and were dismissed by Rangers when Buffel, by sheer coincidence, just happened to be holidaying in Turkey. “The first I saw of the story was reading the newspapers over there, which was a bit of a surprise,” he laughs. “When I was told the same stories had reached here I was worried that people were going to get the wrong impression. I thought I’d have to come back to Scotland in disguise.”

Has he considered what might be his next move after Rangers? A shake of the head. “I never really thought about it at Feyenoord either. I’m in a distinct phase of my career where I’m making my name as a player, I’m 24, I think when you reach 28, that’s it, you are that player, at 24 you still can learn a lot of things and that’s all I’m thinking of and not any kind of move. If things come you make a decision, but I can understand why Henrik Larsson stayed so long (at Celtic. If you feel good somewhere you don’t have to change.”

Strikers tend to be assessed by how many goals they score, which is perhaps why some initial appraisals of Buffel were sceptical. He can finish, but he is just as liable to start a move as end it. “I’ve always been like that, sometimes I get more satisfaction out of an assist than scoring, that ball through for Peter against Inter Milan, my feeling was the same as his,” he says. Playing centrally off the main striker has helped, it is in the hole that he has got Rangers out of one. “As a kid that’s always where I played, you can’t play a position like that in one day, it takes years, I play with my instincts there.” Does McLeish now realise where he is best utilised? “When he signed me he must have known my position because I always played there for Feyenoord so I don’t think he brought me here to be a left-back or anything,” he quips, although he assumed the left midfield role against Livingston yesterday.

Buffel claims Villarreal is the Champions League draw “everyone at Rangers would have picked” and senses they have it in them to make the last 16 of the tournament a regular fixture. “It’s true Spanish and English clubs have more money, but we’ve managed to be there in the last 16 with them,” says Buffel. “That’s a good feeling for everybody and a plus point for the coming years in terms of trying to achieve it again: we know now that we’re capable of doing it.”

Has European progress proved wrong those in Belgium who belittled his move to Rangers? “Probably yes, because they’ve seen I’ve done well here and the people who said, ‘Hey, that’s wrong’, should be convinced now that this was a good move for me. I think it’s a good level here, certainly not an easy level. A lot of big players who have come here have found it difficult.”

He did, too, on his debut as a substitute at Celtic a year ago. “I missed a chance,” he grins, pre-empting the inevitable next question. “It came to me and I snatched at it. You get sucked into the pace of the game being so high, you don’t realise that sometimes you do have more time than you think.” It was only a half-chance, though? “No, it was a good chance,” he says, firmly. A good omen, though, perhaps? There is an interested nod when you relay what Larsson did against Hibernian first time out for Celtic, famously giving the ball away for a Chic Charnley winner.

The best recent imports to the Scottish game, Larsson, Brian Laudrup and Ronald de Boer have all been offered by way of comparison to Buffel since his arrival. Does that trouble him? “Nah, through all my career people have made comparisons with all kind of players, they don’t just say, ‘That’s the way Thomas does it’,” he shrugs.

They soon will because, while it has taken a full year, we know the way he does it now and he does it well. There can be no more doubting Thomas.